Memento
by Lexie Jayne
Summary: One moment in each of the lives of the X5 women. Brin, Tinga, Jondy, Jace and Max.
1. Brin

**Title:** Memento 1/5  
**Author:** Lexie Jayne  
**Feedback:** is beloved if you feel so inclined.  
**Characters:** Brin, Tinga, Syl, Jondy, Max.  
**Word Count:** 231  
**Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** Hours at lj's fanfic100  
**Genre:** Angst, drama  
**Summary:** One moment in the lives of the X5 women.  
**Disclaimer:** Property of James Cameron.

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**_Brin._**  
She sits slumped in the alley for hours, a hat low over her eyes and the damp from the concrete seeping through her jeans. She's got a dollar twenty in her pocket and she's in trouble. If someone looked in on her apartment, they'd see her coffee cup broken on the lino in the kitchen. They'd see pasta boiling all over the stove and slopping on the kitchen floor.

They'd see the television playing loudly, the contents of her bag tossed all over the couch, all the money and her I.D. gone.

The door would be open, and her keys would be hanging out of the door – she forgot her Tryptophan and had tried to go back for it, but her key had stuck – like it always, always did.

She left with a dollar fifty in her pocket, made a phone call to Zack's voice mail. "Zack, it's me. Lydecker's here, in North Dakota. I need help, he's combing the city and I have no way of getting out without you."

She's waiting in the freezing cold, wishing her old gloves had fingers – they'd unraveled and she'd cut them off in frustration. She's leaning on the side of the Dumpster, and she feels sick, knowing that every hour that passes and Zack doesn't turn up, Lydecker gets closer. Zack might not have even checked his messages.

And she waits.

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	2. Tinga

**Title:** Memento 2/5  
**Author:** Lexie Jayne  
**Feedback:** is beloved if you feel so inclined.  
**Characters:** Brin, Tinga, Syl, Jondy, Max.  
**Word Count:** 267  
**Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** Days at lj's fanfic100**  
Genre:** Angst, drama  
**Summary:** One moment in the lives of the X5 women**  
Notes:** Thank you all so much for the lovely reviews :) I hope you enjoy this chapter.**  
Disclaimer:** Property of James Cameron.

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**_Tinga._**  
The apartment that she and Charlie found is tiny – one bedroom, and a bathroom so tiny that Charlie has to stand in the shower to close the door. Tinga loves the little house they have outside of the city, that's painted white and blue with a side of dirt. With the tiny backyard and kids who play baseball in the street because the local school is closed on Wednesdays.

But Charlie's found work; a decent job for once. Enough money that they can move closer, they can actually have a savings account and plan for the future. Charlie will often voice his dream of moving to Canada, where his sister lives, that the American dollar may be worth shit all and when the Pulse destroyed the U.S., all the ideals packed up and moved to Canada.

So, until then, they do their best – and the best is a new job, and an apartment in the city.

The last day in their old house, Tinga sits on the porch of their little house, Case on her lap as Charlie sells the things they can't take with them – sixty dollars for the dining room table, ten for the old orange chair and five dollars for the box of old clothes. The truck Charlie borrowed from a friend is stuffed full of their things, and Tinga looks at the old weatherboard house. She remembers every day she spent here – it's where Case was born, where he learned to crawl and walk and say 'Mama' and 'Daddy'.

"Ready, Penny?" Charlie smiles at her and she smiles back, albeit sadly.

"Let's go."

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	3. Jondy

**Title:** Memento 3/5  
**Author: **Lexie Jayne**  
Feedback:** is beloved if you feel so inclined.  
**Characters:** Brin, Tinga, Jondy, Jace, Max.  
**Word Count:** 261  
**Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** Weeks at at lj's fanfic100  
**Genre:** Angst, drama  
**Summary:** One moment in the lives of the X5 women.  
**Disclaimer: **Property of James Cameron.

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_**Jondy.**_

She sits on the bathroom floor, one leg jiggling as she waits, watching the second hand on her watch; plastic and pink, with butterflies. Eight bucks from some street vendor, and not water proof – it's her third watch in two months and she's got three dollars in the bottom of her backpack.

The test balances on the edge of the sink, and she rests her head in her hands. Six weeks since her last heat and she's been sick - sicker than she ever remembers being, not even after the vaccinations during that long winter when half the X5s ended up in the infirmary.

She wonders what she'll do, if the test comes out positive while she sits here, in the bathroom of Walmarts. She's got a backpack of things and nowhere to go; her only money comes from picking pockets and thieving.

"Honey, are you okay in there?" Someone knocks on the bathroom door and Jondy jumps, straightening up.

"I'm fine!" she calls out and checks her watch. Two minutes to go. She twists a lock of her hair into a braid, sliding pink clips into her hair and waiting.

"Miss?"

A minute – the same it took for Eva to fall, for Max to slip through the ice, to determine what happened next to her. Her nails are bitten raw

"Miss, I'm getting a shop assistant."

Three, two, one.

Negative.

Her hand is on her bag, and she slips from the bathroom, tossing the test in the trash can and before it even hits her, she's emerging onto the street.

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	4. Jace

**Title:** Memento 4/5  
**Author:** Lexie Jayne  
**Feedback:** is beloved if you feel so inclined.  
**Characters:** Brin, Tinga, Jondy, Jace, Max.  
**Word Count: **247**  
Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** Months at lj's fanfic100  
**Genre:** Angst, drama  
**Summary:** One moment in the lives of the X5 women.  
**Disclaimer: **Property of James Cameron.

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**_Jace._**

Nine months felt like a lifetime to anyone from Manticore, especially when so much was changing. If she stood still for a moment and thought about it, she would be amazed that every little thing felt like it took a week. Max's friend had given her money and papers, but that was only the beginning of her new life.

She didn't understand life outside Manticore, there was no rhythm, no pattern, just a jumble of actions and items and things that had to happen and that had to be done. She needed to find a doctor who would overlook anything strange about her baby; a job that she could do and understand and not draw attention to her self.

Jace was frightened and alone. She knew she couldn't go running back to Max for help; she was completely alone, with no orders, no officers and no back up. She sat in her meager apartment (not as clean or as familiar as the barracks) and stare blankly at the front door, tense – but hopeful – that Manticore operatives were about to burst in and drag her back to Manticore, and rip her baby from her body.

Baby Max was born in a clinic at just after midnight, his lips blue and his body frail in her arms, a storm battering at the clinic windows.

"I'm sorry, Ms Sanchez," the doctor said softly.

Nine months felt like a long time to wait for something that she ended up losing.

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	5. Max

**Title:** Memento 5/5  
**Author:** Lexie Jayne  
**Feedback:** is beloved if you feel so inclined.  
**Characters:** Brin, Tinga, Jondy, Jace, Max.  
**Word Count: **246  
**Rating:** PG  
**Prompt:** Years at lj's fanfic100  
**Genre:** Angst, drama  
**Summary:** One moment in the lives of the X5 women.  
**Disclaimer: **Property of James Cameron.  
**Author's Note:** The end of this fic :D I know there's no Syl chapter, but it just didn't fit - I ran out of prompts for this set. Thank you to everyone who reviewed this - it means so much to me. I hope you enjoy this chapter!

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**_Max._**

She's happy, she thinks. Or maybe she thinks that she should happy, or content. She has good friends – the _best_ friends; a place to crash when it all gets too much and she's living life according to her rules – Logan doesn't control her, Zack doesn't order her and Lydecker won't scare her out of this life.

Sometimes she stops for a minute and lets all the noise fade out, and watches the people in the streets brush past, walking out of her line of vision, and she searches for them. Her brothers and sisters in arms, with the flawless beauty of someone designed on a computer and carefully built with millions of tax dollars and infinite possibilities. She looks for people with the same edge in their eyes, the knowing look of people who have seen the worst of so-called progress, and technology, and have lived to talk about it, to run from it.

But Max never looks for the barcodes. She wants to _know_ her siblings on sight, not see a barcode and call out names, trying to match one to a face.

She's as close to happy as she can possibly get – a surprisingly normal life. But it's been so long – years and years since she heard her sisters laugh, and her brothers bicker. Max wants to find them, to be a real family, but she's scared at what they'll be when she finds them. At how hard, how old and how tired they'll be.

Max wants their stories, their drama and their memories. She doesn't want her family to be light in the darkest of her memories, she wants them by her side.

It's been years since she saw them, and it'll be years more before she gives up looking for their faces in a crowd.

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End file.
